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Okay, it’s the weekend. I’ll be busy. And on Monday I go over to the offices at Macmillan/Tor to meet the legendary editor Peter Lavery and my agent, Sir John Jarrold. I’ll update about that on Tuesday, and report from the inner sanctum of a major London publisher. There’ll be all sorts of contract signing stuff going on, you know, selling my soul, that kind of thing. There may be wine involved. Maybe even some pilfering of paperbacks, which reminds me, I must take an empty suitcase.

Some music. This one, by Yorkshire band One Night Only, has all the hallmarks of an indie-pop hit. It’s the kind of things indie funksters love to get drunk on Red Stripe to, and they dance to it on sticky rock club floors, next to girls in Converse shoes, whose moves are well-worked postures, too cool for the likes of you, all in a haze that just flies right by until Sunday morning and you wonder, suddenly, where the weekend went.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BITmOiWOHeQ]

And here’s a little retro trip-hop from Portishead (whatever happened to that movement?). Anyway, isn’t Beth Gibbon’s sexy, in a 1990s kind of way?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imrfo-uRjcE&feature=related]

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Been busy wrapping up the delivery of the book for editor extraordinaire, Peter Lavery at Macmillan, to work his legendary red pen across. In the meantime, have some music. From this very fine collection of indie funksters. They’re a sort of cross between Paul Simon’s Graceland and the Stokes. And it works.

Last night I went to see Bruce Springsteen play at the O2 Arena, in London. And what a mighty concert it was too. There’s been so much talk of various bands reuniting in recent times, and with all the hype you forget sometimes who the truly great musicians are. Then you get talk of the next big thing, commercial hype, and sure you might get good albums out of them, but until they can prove it live, it’s just talk in my opinion. Last night, Bruce came along and showed everyone how it should be done. He worked the crowd into a frenzy, had true charisma. A pro who’s been touring for decades, always thinking of the fans, and showing a love of musicianship. I saw the tour for the Seeger Sessions last year, an album of folk songs and roots Americana, which was also great fun. A talented musician doing something totally different, never afraid to experiment. And back to the more traditional songs last night, you still saw a band who were on top form. The set list was a mixture of new and old, with the killer riff at the beginning of Radio Nowhere getting 23,000 bums off seats right away, to the harsh, raw blues of Reasons to Believe, from the lo-fi album Nebraska. And there was the anti-war, anti-George W speech that was backed up by quality lyrics to hammer the point home. How many modern bands can cope with the complexity of such lyrics? None spring to mind. Reckon I’ll be looking for tickets for the stadium tour next Summer…There’s a reason this man keeps selling out across the world with the same demand for tickets that reunion gigs get.